Further copies are available from:

Publications Section, Scottish Natural Heritage,

Battleby, Redgorton, Perth PH1 3EW.

Telephone 01738 444177.

Scottish Natural Heritage

Scottish Natural Heritage is a government body

established by Parliament in 1992, responsible to the

Secretary of State for Scotland.

Our task is to secure the conservation and enhancement

of Scotland’s unique and precious natural heritage – the

wildlife, the habitats and the landscapes which have

evolved in Scotland through the long partnership between

people and nature.

We advise on policies and promote projects which aim to

improve the natural heritage and support its sustainable use.

Our aim is to help people to enjoy Scotland’s natural

heritage responsibly, understand it more fully and use it

wisely so that it can be sustained for future generations.

Designed and produced by Tayburn.

Photography: Laurie Campbell, Lorne Gill,

Patricia Macdonald, Steve Moore.

ISBN:1 85397 102 0

TH5000201

February 2001

Printed on environmentally-friendly paper

Price £3.95

BoglandsSCOTLAND’S LIVING LANDSCAPES

Contents

Introduction 1

Climate, Sphagnum

and the Boglands 2

A blanket of bog-moss 4

Raised in the Lowlands 6

Walking on water into pre-history 8

The thin red line 8

Life on the boglands 10

It’s not all plants . . . 13

The ‘Dark Casket’ 14

Bogland distribution and

landscapes 16

The changing pattern of pressures 18

Boglands – valuable wetlands,

not wastelands 20

1

Introduction

All these classic scenes have one thing in common – other

than being quintessentially Scottish – yet this common

element is so little regarded that few people now realise the

major part it plays in Scottish life. It is the Scottish

bogland. Dyes for tartan originate here, it is home to the

red deer, the rolling moorland is part of it, whisky wouldn’t

be the same without it, and the tang of peat smoke is,

effectively, hewn from it. In addition to all this, it also forms

an outstanding part of Scotland’s natural heritage.

What single image encapsulates ‘Scotland’ for most people? Perhaps the swirl of tartan,

or maybe Landseer’s famous red stag in ‘Monarch of the Glen’. For some it might be rolling

moorland, for others perhaps ‘a wee dram’ of whisky, or an image of a small croft beneath

a brooding sky and, with it, the sharp tang of peat-smoke.

2

Climate, Sphagnum and the boglands

Throughout the year the atmosphere in Britain is generally

more humid than in much of continental Europe. This can

be all too apparent in some parts of Scotland where rain

falls on two days out of three. Even in dry summer months,

moisture-laden air is carried across Britain from the

Atlantic or the North Sea.

This high humidity, coupled with regular rainfall throughout

the year, produces conditions which are ideal for the

group of lowly plants known as bog-moss or Sphagnum.

These simple plants have no roots, nor any structures for

controlling water loss. They are the botanical equivalent

of a sponge, absorbing water and nutrients through the

surfaces of their leaves, which are arranged along branches

that occur in bunches along a simple stem. With a

microscope it is possible to see that much of the leaf

consists of huge water storage flasks while the chlorophyll

is squeezed into thin strands. For such a plant to survive,

conditions must be sufficiently damp

throughout the year

to keep these storage flasks

topped up.

Individual bog-moss(Sphagnum capillifolium).The spreading branchesgive it structure while thehanging branches,pressed to the stem,draw up water.

Under a microscope, the leaf has large empty cells for storing waterand the chlorophyll is squeezed into narrow strands in between. Spirals of thicker cell wall prevent the cells from collapsing.

View from above

Cross-section

3

When alive, this plant can absorb more than eight times its own weight in water which makes it too heavy for

its tiny stem to support. As a result Sphagnum only grows as a mat of many individual plants which support

each other. This produces a soft, spongy carpet which is typically a riot of colour because each Sphagnum

species has its own vivid hue. The multi-coloured patchwork of simple mosses is the powerhouse of the bog.

4

A blanket of bog-moss

Where rainfall, mists and fogs are frequent, as for example

in western and northern Scotland, the soluble nutrients in

the soil are gradually flushed out, or leached, to leave the

ground waterlogged and infertile. Many species of

Sphagnum are ideally suited to these conditions because

they survive on very little nourishment. Gradually the

mosses smother the ground with their colourful carpets and

radically change the nature of the landscape and their

environment.

An individual Sphagnum plant does not die, in the normal

sense, because it is constantly growing from a bud at the

tip of its stem. Below the tip, it is possible to find dormant

but living buds among the branches about 20cm along the

stem. Below this the old plant is dead. The normal

organisms which break down dead plant material cannot

survive in this soggy mat of plants, which is without air,

very acidic and almost devoid of nutrients. Consequently

layers of dead Sphagnum beneath the living surface do not

decompose, but accumulate slowly, forming a new soil

which we know as peat.

The accumulation process is very slow, perhaps no more

than 1mm every year, but the process has been going on

for some 3,000 to 7,000 years, with the result that in

some places almost the entire original landscape is now

hidden beneath a blanket of up to 7 metres of peat bog.

Such landscapes are known as blanket bog, and form the

major part of Scotland’s boglands.

Cross-section through the surface layer of a bog.Showing the layer of living Sphagnum on top withthe denser Sphagnum peat below, where plants suchas bog cotton take root.

5

6

Raised in the lowlands

Soil leaching is much rarer in the gentler conditions of the

lowlands, but bogs have an even more remarkable method

of forming. When the glaciers retreated from Scotland

10,000 years ago, they left a landscape smeared with quite

impermeable clays, dotted with lochs. Many of these lochs

were slowly covered by with reeds (a) until, in time, no open

water remained. In much the same way as Sphagnum

fragments produce peat in a blanket bog, some fragments

of dead reeds and other plants were preserved in the

waterlogged swamp forming fen peat (b). As the peat

accumulated, plants could no longer root in the mineral

soils below (c). Plants in the outer fringes of the swamp

soaked up all the nutrients flowing in from the surrounding

ground, leaving the centre of the swamp waterlogged and

with few nutrients – just the right combination of conditions

to encourage a bog to form. Some species of Sphagnum

started to dominate the vegetation and peat began to accum-

ulate (d) – then something rather surprising happened!

The steady upward growth of the living Sphagnum carpet

and the slow accumulation of the dead remains below

together produced a peat deposit which began to rise

above the local soil water-table. Instead of drying out,

this rising accumulation, with its living surface, remained

saturated, trapping all the rain which fell regularly and

directly onto the low mound (e). The rainwater was

released only very, very slowly. In this way, waterlogged

conditions were maintained, and the only nutrients were

those dissolved in the rain. Thus conditions for decomposer

organisms became even worse than in blanket bogs, and

virtually all the fresh growth of bog-moss was retained as

peat.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

Stages in the formation of a raised bog.

7

Over the millennia, a mound of peat rises above the surrounding landscape by anything up to 10 metres

(30 ft) high. The bog seems to be a dramatic upwards swelling of the local groundwater, although it is

actually trapped rain which has yet to filter down into the surrounding ground(f). For obvious reasons this

water-filled mound is known as a raised bog.

The thin red line

8

Walking on water into pre-history

Walking on a bog involves walking on a soft living carpet

which floats on a material which is nearly all water – in fact

it has less solids than milk. By weight, a raised bog may be

up to 98 per cent water and only 2 per cent solid peat.

Blanket bogs are rather more solid with as little as 85 per

cent water. This great volume of water is held within the

dead Sphagnum fragments. This ability to retain water is

one of the properties which makes Sphagnum peat such

a prized horticultural material.

There are very few parts of Scotland, particularly in the

lowlands, where the view today resembles that seen by

Bronze Age man – indeed a view which was even then

several thousand years old. Traditionally people avoid

bogs because a careless footstep can plunge the unwary

visitor at least knee-deep into the watery Sphagnum

carpet. The high water content also makes it extremely

difficult to turn this ground into farmland. As a result,

many such areas which survive today retain the same

character as they have done for thousands of years.

It is possible to share a real sense of timelessness when

gazing out across the Scottish boglands. Here is a land-

scape as old as, or in many cases several thousand years

older than, the oldest man-made structures in Scotland.

For millennia the bogs have stood as open landscapes

while all around the great forests have come and gone.

A bog consists of two layers: the upper, very thin layer,

known as the acrotelm, is only some 30cm deep, and

consists of upright stems of the Sphagnum bog mosses,

largely still alive and colourful with their red, yellows and

ochres. Water can move rapidly through this layer.

9

Below this is a very much thicker bulk of peat, known as

the catotelm, where individual plant stems have collapsed

under the weight of mosses above them to produce an

amorphous, chocolate-coloured mass of Sphagnum

fragments. Water movement through this amorphous

peat is very slow indeed – typically less than a metre

a day. This is where most of the rainwater is stored.

From here the water slowly seeps down through the bog

over several weeks or even months.

The catotelm resembles the lower layers of a tropical

rainforest, or the abyssal depths of the oceans,

environments which enjoy constant, unvarying conditions

because they are protected from the turbulent environment

above by a relatively thin canopy or surface layer.

In the same way, the living layer, or acrotelm, shields the

catotelm from direct contact with the atmosphere, sealing

it in and providing it with a steady supply of water.

Under normal circumstances, the water-table within the

bog never drops down into the catotelm. Even drainage

merely empties the acrotelm of its water more quickly.

Generally the water-table is very stable, spending some

95 per cent of its time within a few centimetres of the

bog’s surface. Because the surface of a bog typically

consists of low hummocks and ridges, scattered with

hollows or pools, this stable water-table produces intense

competition for living-space between species. And so,

several zones of characteristic vegetation have evolved,

each depending on their proximity to the water-table.

In increasingly wet climates, bogs have adapted interesting

surface patterns of pools to hold the surplus water which

can not seep away before the next rainstorm. The pools are

formed in the peat and do not go down to the underlying

soil. They are unique to bogs and totally devoid of fish.

However, they are home to a wide variety of insects.

These peaty-pools or dubh lochain display dramatic

differences in their patterns – size, distribution and

orientation – across the country and provide much of the

structural diversity of Scotland’s boglands on which the

living flora and fauna then depend.

Water-table in wet and dry weather

10

Life on the boglands

In this remarkable environment, everything is waterlogged

and floating on an immensely deep soup of peat. Yet there

is often relatively little open water at the bog surface and

nutrient levels are barely above that of distilled water. It is

not surprising that bogs host some remarkable species.

Perhaps the most spectacular and best-known adaptation

to life on the bog is the carnivorous plant. Several species

have developed the ability to trap and eat animals as a

means of supplementing their meagre diet. The animals are

very small and almost exclusively insects, although the

sundews (Drosera species) are able to trap the big darter

dragonflies which have wingspans as wide as a human hand.

The sweet-scented bog myrtle (Myrica gale), typical of

western boglands, forms a partnership with bacteria in its

roots to obtain extra nitrogen, while the common bog-

cotton (Eriophorum angustifolium) uses a ‘snorkel

technique’, relying on large air-filled cells in its roots and

leaf-bases to survive in the oxygen-poor environment

beneath the living carpet of Sphagnum. A family of tiny,

brilliantly-coloured ‘jewel’ beetles (Donacia species) use

these air-spaces as living quarters.

Contrary to popular belief, boglands are not dreary places:

a close examination reveals a wealth of colour and mixture

of distinctive scents. The Sphagnum bog mosses

themselves each have a vivid colour, some are deep wine-

red, others are brilliant orange or gingery brown, while yet

other have brilliant greens mixed with delicate salmon-

pinks. They combine to form a scene as intricate and

colourful as a Persian rug. Dotted through this soft carpet

you can find the greens and pinks of heaths and heathers

(Erica and Calluna), bright splashes of yellow and orange

from the bog asphodel (Narthecium ossifragum), fuschia-

pinks and ruby reds of the cranberry flowers and berries

(Vaccinium oxycoccos), the delicate white and pink frothy

flowers of the bog-bean (Menyanthes trifoliata), or the

white rose-like flower of the cloudberry (Rubus

chamaemorus) with its scarlet or orange fruit.

As the summer draws to a close, the boglands stand

out most distinctively from the rest of the landscape.

The leaves of both the common bog-cotton and, in

particular, the deer grass (Scirpus cespitosus) turn the

sward to a brilliant russet which seems to glow in the low

winter light. These russet patches, swathes, or even entire

landscapes, are sure indicators of bogland.

Contrary to popular belief, boglands

are not dreary places: a close

examination reveals a wealth of colour

and mixture of distinctive scents.

11

Common bog cotton Round-leaved sundew

Great sundewBog-moss and heath milkwort

Red-throated diver

13

It’s not all plants ...

Boglands are home to only a few types of animals, yet

they can boast the largest animal in Britain today – the red

deer. Red deer can be found wallowing in peat baths to

rid themselves of flies and parasites. Otters and badgers

occasionally venture out into the bogs in search of the

eggs and chicks of ground-nesting birds. You may also see

pine martens, stoats and weasels, and even the very

occasional wildcat.

The songs of skylarks and meadow pipits provides

incessant background noise on the boglands. But perhaps

the two most characteristic sounds of the boglands are,

first, the rustle and buzz of dragonfly wings on a still, sunny

day as these huge insects patrol the pools and hollows that

are dotted across the bogs of north and west Scotland, and

the cries of the birds. Most evocative of all, however, is the

combination of bird-songs: the sad ‘wheep’ of the golden

plover as a plaintive background either to the delightful

descending trill of a dunlin settling onto its nesting

territory, or to the mournful cry of the rain-goose, or

red-throated diver caterwauling in the evening sunset and

adding to the haunted nature of the bogs.

Dunlin

Dragonflies

14

The ‘Dark Casket’

So called by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, the ‘dark

casket’ of the boglands bring their past with them to the

present day. They are history books which can be opened

page by page and then read word for word, browsed from

chapter to chapter, or appreciated for one or two beautiful

passages.

Stored within the peat, there is the complete record of the

bog’s history, and much more besides. By taking a

downward core cut through the peat, it is possible to

determine from the plant remains, many of which look as

fresh as the day they died thousands of years ago, what

species were growing on the bog at any time. Scientists

have been able to link changes in the bog vegetation to

shifts in the climate, showing that bogs are extremely

sensitive historical indicators of climatic change. The snap

shots from a range of bogs have helped us to piece

together the small-scale changes in climate which have

occurred during the last 10,000 years.

However, the ‘dark casket’ contains much more than just

the history of the bog and its climate. Pollen grains from

the surrounding countryside fall continuously onto the

surface of the bog. Analysis of this ‘pollen rain’ from

different layers in the peat reveals the composition of the

vegetation dominating both the terrain around the bog and

landscapes further afield. This pollen record has made it

possible to reconstruct the history of the Scottish

landscape far back before written records, almost to the

end of the last ice age. We know from this record that the

boglands have always been largely open areas in the

landscape while around them a succession of forests have

come and gone.

Late BronzeAge Shield

Late BronzeAge Situla(bucket)

15

The pollen record shows phases when the first inhabitants

began to clear the forests, but sometimes the human

interaction was more direct. The magnificent bronze

cauldron found buried in Flanders Moss may well have been

a votive offering, whereas the Rotten Bottom Bow,

Britain’s oldest bow, was probably thrown aside into the

bog when it broke while hunting game. There are buried

tracks, coins, whole villages, jewellery and even ‘bog butter’

– a kind of soft cheese preserved by the acids in the peat.

But it is the people, the ‘bog bodies’, which really capture

the imagination. Several have been found in Scottish bogs,

but none has been subsequently preserved. Undoubtedly

the best preserved are the bog bodies from Denmark,

where Tollund Man, skin blacked by the acids and tannin

from the bog, appears to be asleep, even though he was

sacrificed and buried in the bog almost 2,000 years ago.

Lindow Man, from a bog in Cheshire and dating from the

same time, can be seen in the British Museum.

1995

1000

0 A.D.

B.C.

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

8000

— Battle of Hastings (1066)

— Roman Empire (10-400)

— Tollund Man - Period of Iron Age bog sacrifices (400)

— Stonehenge completed (1600)

— Beginning of Neolithic period (3750)

— Britain becomes an island as North and Irish Seas form (5000-6000)

— Lowland raised bogs begin to form (8000)

Age0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Depth

Late Bronze Age female figure (Detail) Votive statues were placed near treacherous stretches of track to ward off evil spirits and to ensure safe passage.

16

Bogland distribution and landscapes

Scotland has more than one million hectares of bogland,

which represents two-thirds of the total bogland resource

in Britain. Caithness and Sutherland possess a significant

proportion of the blanket bog in Britain, and indeed Europe.

Indeed the area of the ‘Flow Country’ in these two districts

has been recognised by international specialists as unique

and of global importance. In part this is because the world

distribution of blanket bog is confined to a few oceanic

coastal regions around the globe, and the Scottish blanket

bogs are seen as the characteristic type by which all others

are judged.

In the lowlands, the boglands are much more restricted,

originally covering less than 30,000 hectares. Raised bogs

were formerly found on the Grampian coastal plain, along

the north Solway shore, and throughout the Central Belt

of Scotland.

Distribution of blanket bogs.

Distribution of raised bogs.

17

The changing pattern of pressures

Until the turn of the century, the major land-use pressure

on bogland came from agriculture and many of the smaller

sites in the lowlands were entirely changed. Going back

at least to Roman times, there has been a steady but

small-scale cutting of peat for fuel, a practice which

continues today.

This traditional use involves the removal of the living skin

of vegetation, then slicing through the lower peat with a

blade (known by various local names, such as a tushkar in

Shetland). The peat is then stacked above the peat face

for the summer months to dry, before being gathered in at

the end of the summer and stored for use in the winter.

The soft mossy or white peat of Sphagnum-rich bog is

good for starting a fire, but the hottest, finest-burning peat

is the blue peat from the lower layers of a bog.

When horses were the main form of transport, peat was

cut commercially as an absorbent bedding for stables, but

this practice died out after the First World War. However,

at about this time, the need for pit-timbers gave rise to a

programme of planting conifer forests on peat. Since then,

very considerable areas of both raised bog and blanket bog

have been planted, but the rate of planting has declined

significantly in recent years. It is important that future

forestry policies continue to take account of the conser-

vation value of peat bogs and that the areas of national and

international significance are not lost through planting.

Since the 1960s the horticultural industry has used peat as

its favoured growing-medium, largely because of its water-

retaining properties and its consistently low nutrient

content. As a result, more boglands have been subjected to

commercial peat extraction. With only a limited peatland

extent, in future the industry will have to move increasingly

to sustainable growing-media based on recycled organic

materials.

18

16

14

12

10

8

6

4

2

01850 1890 1947 1970 1978

Bogland

Drained Moss

Peat Cutting

Agriculture

Woodland/Forestry

Urban

HE

CT

AR

ES

(00

0s)

Changes in land use on selected bogs over a 150 year period.

19

In the lowlands of Scotland, only 5 per cent of the original

area of raised bog now remains in a relatively intact state.

In the 1950s ploughing on deep peat became technically

possible, and made general drainage for agricultural

purposes much easier. As a result, it is now difficult to find

areas of blanket bog below 500 metres without at least one

or two drains dug across part of the site. It is important

that future afforestation policies continue to take account

of the conservation values of bogs.

Considerable areas of blanket bog are eroding, especially

bogs lying at 300 metres or higher. The deep gullying and

hagging may be, in part, natural, but it is clear that the

process is being accelerated by practices such as burning

and over-grazing by both red deer and sheep.

Commercial peatextraction with amechanical harvester.

20

Boglands – valuable wetlands,not wastelandsSince the time of the Clearances and the agricultural

revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,

the Scottish boglands have, like the Irish ‘blacklands’, been

regarded as barriers to progress – bleak ‘wet deserts’

which offer little in the way of immediate financial return.

Conversion to some other type of landscape has been the

general practice. However, this has often proved more

difficult than anticipated. Many schemes have been tried,

but few have delivered any lasting benefits. Consequently a

great deal of the bogland in the Highlands and the Southern

Uplands has been modified, but still persists in varying

degrees of naturalness and in varying states of recovery.

The difficulty of bogland reclamation has much to do with

the character of Scotland (particularly its climate),

combined with the nature of the boglands themselves.

A better understanding of these very special places not

only helps us to understand why so many of these schemes

have had limited success, but also leads to a greater

appreciation of the very real benefits to be gained from

maintaining boglands in their natural state.

In many areas, without the bogland to form a protective

layer over the underlying soils, the high rainfall would erode

the soils and wash many of the less stable soils off the hill

and into the rivers, causing severe problems downstream.

De-stabilisation of the peat cover by burning or drainage

can cause rapid peat erosion; and many reservoirs with

peat catchments are now more than two-thirds full with

peat sediments. Most of Scotland’s drinking water comes

from catchments which are dominated by bogland.

The whisky industry has recognised the importance of

bogland water for more than 200 years – the water coming

from the boglands is of such a special quality that it forms a

vital ingredient in the mysterious art of the whisky distiller.

The Scottish boglands have a sense of timelessness.

Dismissed as useless wastelands yet supplying most of

Scotland’s drinking water, they are often thought of as

drab, dreary and lifeless, but in truth they are rich with vivid

splashes of colour and species straight from the world of

science fiction. These remarkable landscapes form one of

the defining elements of Scotland’s natural heritage, so we

must take active steps to ensure that they are safeguarded

for the benefit of future generations.

Lagavulin whisky distillery

Contents

Introduction 1

Climate, Sphagnum

and the Boglands 2

A blanket of bog-moss 4

Raised in the Lowlands 6

Walking on water into pre-history 8

The thin red line 8

Life on the boglands 10

It’s not all plants . . . 13

The ‘Dark Casket’ 14

Bogland distribution and

landscapes 16

The changing pattern of pressures 18

Boglands – valuable wetlands,

not wastelands 20

Further copies are available from:

Publications Section, Scottish Natural Heritage,

Battleby, Redgorton, Perth PH1 3EW.

Telephone 01738 444177.

Scottish Natural Heritage

Scottish Natural Heritage is a government body

established by Parliament in 1992, responsible to the

Secretary of State for Scotland.

Our task is to secure the conservation and enhancement

of Scotland’s unique and precious natural heritage – the

wildlife, the habitats and the landscapes which have

evolved in Scotland through the long partnership between

people and nature.

We advise on policies and promote projects which aim to

improve the natural heritage and support its sustainable use.

Our aim is to help people to enjoy Scotland’s natural

heritage responsibly, understand it more fully and use it

wisely so that it can be sustained for future generations.

Designed and produced by Tayburn.

Photography: Laurie Campbell, Lorne Gill,

Patricia Macdonald, Steve Moore.

ISBN:1 85397 102 0

TH5000201

February 2001

Printed on environmentally-friendly paper

Price £3.95

BoglandsSCOTLAND’S LIVING LANDSCAPES